Contemporary histories and theories of empire generally remain within boundaries inspired by varieties of liberalism, and by Marxian theory and its hybrids, in which changing modes of production determine the forms of power, including empire. Liberal theorists and historians of empire generally trace a complex process in which expanding imperial power systems led ultimately to nation-states, democracy, and market economies. For Marxists and postmodern theorists, the formal aspects of empire remain unimportant compared to the broader workings of modes of (...) production and particularly, the global power of capitalism. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri use the word “empire” to describe the workings of contemporary capitalism and its myriad forms of power. Whether they rely upon the formal definitions of empire or the Marxian-postmodern one, theories of empire often descend from modern utopian visions: perhaps the Kantian variety emphasizing a peaceful union of states and collective learning, or the Marxian one, although now taking into account changes in the mode of production and victims unattended to by Marx and Engels. New technologies and communications networks impress all contemporary theorists. Some proclaim the end of modern power systems and empire; others find empire in a new, postmodern form. Nonetheless, there are stubborn continuities with the modern in the very persistence of modern utopias, the dominance of nation-states, the pursuit of democracy, and the durability of capitalism. Theorists of power and empire have to explain these and other continuities, alongside the disappearance of the more than 400-year-old balance-of-power system in which imperial powers in the European core finally delivered vast power to the United States and the Soviet Union, and created new technologies that strengthen human connection as well as threaten vast destruction. The question of the power of the United States and its imperial status commands the center of attention. (shrink)

Anthropology is a discipline very conscious of its history. Alan Barnard has written a clear, detailed overview of anthropological theory that brings out the historical contexts of the great debates, tracing the genealogies of theories and schools of thought. His book covers the precursors of anthropology; evolutionism in all its guises; diffusionism and culture area theories, functionalism and structural-functionalism; action-centered theories; processual and Marxist perspectives; the many faces of relativism, structuralism and poststructuralism; and recent interpretive and postmodernist viewpoints. (...) This is a balanced and judicious survey, which also considers the problems involved in assessing anthropological theories. (shrink)

Divided into two parts this book examines the train of social theory from the 19th century, through to the `organization of modernity', in relation to ideas of social planning, and as contributors to the `rationalistic revolution' of the `golden age' of capitalism in the 1950s and 60s. Part two examines key concepts in the social sciences. It begins with some of the broadest concepts used by social scientists: choice, decision, action and institution and moves on to examine the `collectivist (...) alternative': the concepts of society, culture and polity, which are often dismissed as untenable by postmodernists today. This is a major contribution to contemporary social theory and provides a host of essential insights into the task of social science today. (shrink)

Robert Baker and Laurence McCullough argue that the "applied ethics model" is deficient and in need of a replacement model. However, they supply no clear meaning to "applied ethics" and miss most of what is important in the literature on methodology that treats this question. The Baker-McCullough account of medical and applied ethics is a straw man that has had no influence in these fields or in philosophical ethics. The authors are also on shaky historical grounds in dealing with two (...) problems: (1) the historical source of the notion of "practical ethics" and (2) the historical source of and the assimilation of the term "autonomy" into applied philosophy and professional ethics. They mistakenly hold (1) that the expression "practical ethics" was first used in a publication by Thomas Percival and (2) that Kant is the primary historical source of the notion of autonomy as that notion is used in contemporary applied ethics. (shrink)

This book seeks to provide an introductory outline of the history and theory of knowledge production, notwithstanding the vastness of the subject. It is a brief history of intellectual formation or history of ideas. One can see it as a textbook of historical epistemology, which in spatio-temporal terms historicises knowledge production and contextualises methodological development. It addresses the historical process of the social constitution of knowledge, that is, the social history of the making of knowledge.

This book brings together some of the most important essays in the theory of history which have produced this revolution and the responses to it.

In this ambitious work, Fred Weinstein confronts the obstacles that have increasingly frustrated our attempts to explain social and historical reality. Traditionally, we have relied on history and social theory to describe the ways people understand the world they live in. But the ordering explanations we have always used--derived from the classical social theories originally forged by Marx, Tocqueville, Weber, Durkheim, Freud--have collapsed. In the wake of this collapse or "fall," the rival claims of fiction, psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, (...) and history have created the dilemma of radical relativism, the prospect of multiple interpretations of any complex historical event. The basic strategy of social theory and the social sciences--the search for underlying unities--proves so inherently contradictory and has provided so little in the way of reliable knowledge of social and historical relationships that to many critics it seems no longer worth pursuing. Weinstein enters the debate by rejecting any search for underlying structural unities, dynamic or social, through which historians have attempted to find continuity with the past. He looks instead to ideological processes, to the construction of successive and changing versions of reality that mediate between the power of fantasy on the one side and the power of the social world on the other. He argues further that the need to use ideological constructs in this way accounts for the heterogeneous and changing content of social movements and for the persistent need people have always had for authoritative leaders, even in democratized societies. He suggests that people have historically been able to take a step away from leaders only by substituting the possession of objects such as property or money. This book is a breakthrough in poststructuralist theory that is sure to stimulate considerable discussion, especially about the shape of the social sciences and the future of historical interpretation. (shrink)

Gregory Conti’s Parliament the Mirror of the Nation: Representation, Deliberation, and Democracy in Victorian England offers a carefully researched, fine-grained historical reconstruction of ninete...

as you have stated the Question, 'tis not about what was First, or Foremost; but what is Instant, and Now in being.... You go (if I may say so) upon Fact, and would prove that things actually are in such a state and condition, which if they really were, there would indeed by no dispute left. [Shaftesbury, The Moralist]. As for the Performance itself, it is but an Essay. [Edward Ward].

Myth and history are generally considered antithetical modes of explanation. Writers of each tend to distrust the data of the other. Many historians of the modern period see their task as one of removing all trace of myth from the historical record. Many students of myth consider history to have less explanatory power than traditional narratives. Since the Greeks, logos has been opposed to mythos . In more general terms myth may be defined as any set of unexamined (...) assumptions. Some modern historians have become aware that much so-called factual history is interfused with such assumptions. What we call history is at best mythistory. Some even suggest that there can be no real distinction between the discourses of myth and history, between fact and fiction. The Agastya-Aurobindo narrative is an example of a account based on factual materials that gradually became transformed into fiction. It is accepted by some as historical truth; however when its development is studied critically, one can see that successive narrators "euphemistically" transformed its constituent propositions. The Ramjanmabhumi narrative took form in much the same way. It is not possible to accept these legends as historical truth, though there is no reason why they could not be used as the basis of artistic creations. To avoid conflict by attempting to keep myth and history entirely separate may not be possible because the two interpenetrate. The most fruitful approach to the problem might be to work towards a dialectical resolution. (shrink)

The history of the opposition of the Dionysian and Apollonian principles is longer than is usually assumed. Similarly to the many of the other contrarian figures ascribed to Nietzsche, the Apollonian–Dionysian was not of his making; its history is much older and buried under a number of different layers of interpretation. In the following work I will discuss the formal aspects and content of their development, which took place under the direct authorial influence of Pseudo-Longinus, Jacob Bernays, Friedrich (...) Schiller, Fr. W. J. Schelling and Johan Jacob Bachofen. Still, although the discovery of a principle labelled das Dionysische doesn’t represent anything exceptional, the “Birth of Tragedy” treatise was a breakthrough: it began the development of a specific form of cultural critique, of which Nietzsche was the prime representative. (shrink)

These posthumous essays by Joan Kelly, a founder of women's studies, represent a profound synthesis of feminist theory and historical analysis and require a realignment of perspectives on women in society from the Middle Ages to the present.

In November of 1925 Born, Heisenberg and Jordan wrote an article together in which they demonstrated that Einstein's energy fluctuation formula could be derived from quantum mechanics. They remark that the equations are subject to reinterpretation. Specifically, the states of radiation oscillators can be reinterpreted as numbers of quanta of radiation. They also connected this latter idea up with Bose-Einstein statistics. Heisenberg wrote to Pauli that it was Jordan who contributed the idea of reinterpreting the terms. This was the first (...) step toward quantum field theory. In August of the following year Dirac derived Einstein's A and B coefficients for induced transitions between states but on the assumption that the electromagnetic field could be treated classically (Dirac 1927). In 1927 Dirac lay the mathematical foundations for quantum electrodynamics. Early that year he combined quantum mechanics, special relativity, and radiation theory in treating the electromagnetic field as if it were an infinite collection of oscillators. (shrink)

It has become common, following Stephen Darwall’s “Two Kinds of Respect”, to distinguish between “appraisal respect” and “recognition respect.” I propose, rather, to distinguish between hierarchical and egalitarian respect. The way the two meanings interact and the way they either support or contrast with each other have yet to be made clear. The meanings gathered under the broad rubric of respect can be highlighted by a genealogy that convincingly shows that the hierarchical notion is fundamental and that the definition of (...) an egalitarian meaning is a decisive shift made mainly by the Enlightenment movement, particularly by Kant. Furthermore, the notion of respect is currently being extended beyond persons—to animals, other living beings, and the environment. I argue that we can justifiably do so on the basis of the interaction between the hierarchical and egalitarian notions of respect. (shrink)

It has become common, following Stephen Darwall’s “Two Kinds of Respect” (1977), to distinguish between “appraisal respect” and “recognition respect.” I propose, rather, to distinguish between hierarchical and egalitarian respect. The way the two meanings interact and the way they either support or contrast with each other have yet to be made clear. The meanings gathered under the broad rubric of respect can be highlighted by a genealogy that convincingly shows that the hierarchical notion is fundamental and that the definition (...) of an egalitarian meaning is a decisive shift made mainly by the Enlightenment movement, particularly by Kant. Furthermore, the notion of respect is currently being extended beyond persons—to animals, other living beings, and the environment. I argue that we can justifiably do so on the basis of the interaction between the hierarchical and egalitarian notions of respect. (shrink)

Historians of psychology have described how the ‘introspection’ of early Wundtian psychology largely came to be ruled out of experimental psychology settings by the mid-20th century. In this paper I take a fresh look at the years before this process was complete – from the vantage point of early ethnographic and psychological field expeditions. Beginning with the psychological research conducted during and after the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to theTorres Straits Islands(CAETS) in 1898,Iwill discuss the importance of the CAETS in the (...) history of anthropology and psychology and explore some possible ways of approaching experimental cognitive psychology ethnographically. I describe the experience of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Cambridge experimental psychology lab founded after the CAETS by C.S. Myers, focusing on its implications for Wittgenstein’s later thought and for contemporary ‘affect theory’. (shrink)

本收从思想史的角度,记叙西方国际政治学80年以来的演进过程,包括各阶段的主要特征、成就和问题。对理想主义、现实主义、行为主义、全球主义、后现代主义、新自由主义等各大流派进行了介绍和评点。.